The candidate had been through five rounds. That is five separate conversations, five sets of people nodding and taking notes, five rounds of being told the process was moving along. Then the recruiter went quiet. Two and a half weeks passed before the candidate broke the silence with a polite message asking when they might hear something.
The answer came back fast. They had already picked someone — two weeks earlier.
Not 'we are still considering you.' Not 'we have decided to go another way, thank you for your time.' The recruiter had known, for fourteen days, while the candidate sat waiting for news, and had said nothing until directly asked. The decision was made before the silence even started. The silence was simply the default.
There is a kind of efficiency that looks like competence and is really just the cheapest possible way to end a conversation. This is that efficiency. Five rounds of the candidate's time, two weeks of their patience, and the information they were owed was produced only on request, and only because the recruiter was put on the spot.
The post found a few hundred people who recognised the shape of it immediately.